European Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics

ECCOMAS CFD 2006

P. Wesseling, E. Oñate, J. Périaux (Eds)
 TU Delft, The Netherlands, 2006

COMPUTATIONAL CAVITATION ANALYSIS OF A SUBMERGED

BODY AT DIFFERENT DEPTHS

M. Sohaib*, M Ayub, M. Rafique.

*
Centre for Fluid Dynamics,
NESCOM Islamabad, Pakistan.
e-mail: sohaib_aziz72@yahoo.com

Key Words: Cavitation, Hydrodynamics, Submarines, Naval Architecture,

CFD Analysis.

Abstract
Transient’s analysis is performed to determine the cavitation inception on a submerged
body and flow dynamics under different working conditions. Cavitation causing
hydrodynamic, structural and noise problems is essential to avoid. Cavitation analysis is
done for a particular geometry to investigate the location and determine the critical
conditions for different depths at which cavitation take place. Simulation has been done using
the commercial CFD code Fluent 6.1. Multiphase Mixture model and Standard K- ε
turbulence model with standard wall function is used in the study. Analysis determines the
region and critical velocity for a particular depth at which cavitation occurs. The time
dependent analysis provides detailed insight into the hydrodynamics and highlights the
capabilities and limitations of the cavitation model used.

1. INTRODUCTION
Applications of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to the maritime industry continue to
grow as this advanced technology takes advantage of the increasing speed of computers.
Numerical approaches have evolved to a level of accuracy, which allows them to be used
during the design process to estimate the forces and moments acting on the body during
steady and unsteady motion and to predict the maneuvering performance of the vehicle
moving underwater provided that have been validated to a certain level. Significant progress
has been made in predicting flow characteristics around a given ship or marine hull. The
marine designers can use this information to improve the submarine and ship's design.
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Prediction of drag on a ship hull is always a challenging task for a naval architect. At the start
of the design process, hull forms are developed given certain requirements. One of the major
design tasks is to estimate the powering performance so that propulsion requirements can be
determined. Early estimates of resistance and power are often based on simple empirical
formulas derived from data for similar ships. As the design process proceeds, a more reliable
approach becomes necessary to predict resistance; scale-model testing has been generally
adopted for this purpose.Cavitation plays an important role in many practical life problems.
This phenomenon plays a significant role where high speed flows are involved. Its role in
marine hydrodynamics is very important. While designing underwater moving vehicles,
special attention is paid to it.
Cavitation in liquids takes place when the local pressure of liquid at a certain location is
less than its vapor pressure. Since pressure in liquids is related to velocity, so at the regions
where velocity is high enough so that the local pressure at that particular location becomes
less than the vapor pressure, cavitation takes place.Many problems related to structural
strength of the objects are caused due to cavitation. Cavitation bubbles formed over the
surface of underwater moving vehicles, cause the sever structural problems when these
bubbles rupture. When these bubbles collapse, an enormous vibrations are produced which
not only cause danger to structural strength of the object but also can cause many sever
metallurgical problems. Role of cavitations in control system design is also matter of
concern. Cavitation developed over a large scale result in decrease in drag which disturbs the
control parameters. The decrease in drag is because of the reduced wetted area due to
cavitation.Cavitation produces enormous noise. This is a severe problem for strategic
weapons. Submarines are designed to attack on enemy which could be possible if they are not
detected by the enemy. Noise produced by cavitation may put their survival in danger
because it act as an alarm to the enemy. Therefore cavitation in strategic weapons is strictly
avoided. Cavitation could also used to design the high speed underwater moving vehicles.
Supercavitating bodies have the cavitation bubble all around them, which result in reduced
wetted area and hence the drag is reduced drastically.
Under Cavitation conditions, water is one of the worst actors regarding equipment damage
due to cavitation. Water is hard on equipment in cavitation conditions for at least two
reasons: relatively high density(small molecular size and heavy molecular weight), and a
sharp well defined phase change behavior. The combination of small heavy molecules and
high cavity wall implosion velocities (resulting from sharp and fast rate of phase change),
results in the release of extreme inertial energies as the walls of cavity strike against each
other and against objects in the fluid flow path during the cavity implosion. Liquids with
molecules larger and more complex than water and non homogenous liquids such as many
petrochemicals, cab be less much harmful to equipment in cavitation conditions because they
often have a lower than water, their larger more complex molecular structure and sometimes
non-homogenous nature causes blurred or less well defind phase change behavior, both of
which reduce the rate of cavity creation and collapse, and the amount of energy released in
the implosion. Therefore the amount of damage caused by cavition is reduced.
In the design process of a wide variety of fluid machinery, as the naval profile under
investigations, the occurrence of cavitation is on of the most important aspects that need to be
considered. Cavitation is the formation of vapor in a liquid in regions where liquid velocity is
high and consequently pressure is low, i.e. becomes lower than the vapor pressure. The
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inception, development, and collapse of cavitation produce noise, vibration and even damage
the solid wall.
Cavitation phenomena are of interest for a wide range of engineering fields, from fuel
injection systems for internal combustion engines to hydraulic turbines and pumps of all size.
In injection nozzles, cavitation has a strong influence on spray formation and atomization. In
hydraulic machine the cavitation may occur along stationary parts and on the moving blades.
Liquid fuel and oxidizer turbo pumps for rocket engines are usually operated under cavitating
conditions with quite high rotational speed to attain high performance with their minimum
size and weight. Cavitation of marine propellers may cause many problems, such as vibration
noise and erosion on the blades. Marine propellers researchers and designers have made
numerous efforts to reduce the effect of cavitation. However with recent high speed shallow
draft ships, it is difficult to avoid cavitation without compromising the efficiency of
propellers.When a marine propeller is operated in the wake of a ship, the angle of attack of
the incoming flow relative to the blade varies as the propeller rotates. This causes the periodic
growth and collapse of cavity, and this fluctuating pattern is strongly related to the vibration
and noise often associated with the cavitation. Propeller designer must therefore control the
influence of cavitation rather than try to suppress its occurrence. As a result, the accurate
prediction of cavitation is becoming increasingly important. Model tests provide valuable
insights into the cavitation physics in various predetermined conditions, but they cost a
significant amount of money and are vulnerable to slight flow condition changes inside
cavitation tunnels. Different efforts have been given in literature to simulate cavitating flow
with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. However validation of computational
results with experimental data is very fragmentary in many papers. The main cause is the lack
of experimental data. In general the results are very promising. Several aspects of cavitation
phenomena, of fundamental importance for the profiles design, can be accurately captured
with the developed cavitation models.

2. GEOMETRY

Geometry used here is the standard hull models of submarine DARP 2 and the salient
features of the geometry is listed here and sketched in the Fig. 1,2,&3. The detail of the
geometry is as follows.

Model
Length, L = 4.355 m
Cylinder body Radius, R =0.2539884 m
Exit Diameter, D (exit) = 0 .0075 m

3. GRID GENERATION
For 2D simulation, structured grids are modeled for the analysis of submarine hull.
Structured grids were modeled for the cavitation analysis at different working conditions.
Three different Grid Models were constructed for hull body configuration having different
number of blocks 4, 5 & 6 respectively. Grid independence was insured for three grids,
grid1,grid2 &grid3.For grid independence study, Coefficient of pressure was calculated and
plotted for all the three grids shown in Fig 2. It was observed clearly that pressure coefficient
results for all the three grids of different dimensions are very close to each other. Hence our
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analysis is independent of Grid model. Grid 2 having less dimensions is selected for the study
to save computational time. This Grid model for the hull configurations consist of 5 blocks
and after grid independence study this grid was selected for analysis. 2D axis-symmetric
body was modeled to perform the cavitation analysis for the hull configuration at different
conditions of pressure and velocity. Grid 2 having dimensions 60 x 80 points, in the Block-1
containing the Nose section, the Block-2 consists of a cylinder body model with the grid size
of 40 x 80 points, the Block-3 is over the tail to the far field of the size of 60 x 80 points, the
Block-4 is over the lower tail portion having size 30 x 80 points, the Block-5 is between the
body and last domain wall. This is a wake domain consisting of 60X80 points. Grid model
used in the study was made by using PAKGRID [6]. Grid is shown in Fig1.

Fig.1 Gid2 2-D axi symmetric Structured grid for Hull model

4. FLOW CONDITIONS
Flow conditions for the submarine DARPA 2 are reported as follows:
Free stream velocity = 15, 30, 45 m/s
Reynolds number = 3.89E07,
Angle of attack = 0 deg
Pressure outlet = 2, 4, 5 bar
Turbulence model = K-ε model
Depth in water = 10, 20, 30, 40 m
Near wall treatment = Standard Wall function
Discretization scheme = First order upwind scheme

5. BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

Velocity Inlet conditions were imposed on the far field domains, while the pressure outlet
condition was imposed at the exit of the submarine assembly. At the submarine walls, no-
slip adiabatic Wall condition was imposed. For the interfaces between the different blocks,
the contiguous interface boundary condition was used. 3-Dimensional half-body plane was
taken as symmetry plane condition and Axis condition was applied on the nose and tail
centerline.
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6. RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS

The main purpose of the study is to analyze the hull geometry for cavitation. Emphasis
has been given to the determine the cavitation existence under different depths in water and
to locate the region where cavitation has occurred. Transient analysis is performed to
understand how the cavity size grows with the time. Analysis is performed at different
working conditions. In the first part of analysis velocity is kept constant while the
underwater depth of the hull is set at 10m, 20 m, 30m, and 40m. The analysis is performed at
fixed velocity of 30m/s while the pressure at three different depth locations were 2 bar, 4 bar
and 5bar respectively. At v = 30m/s & p = 3bar,depth in water (D)=20m, static pressure
distribution over the hull body is shown in fig 6. Pressure distribution over the body shows
the regions where the low pressure is observed. Regions where the edges are sharp, pressure
reduces and reduces beyond the vapor pressure. This phenomenon is clearly observed in fig 5
where volume fraction of water vapors is observed, showing the cavity on the nose region
and on the tail region. These are the regions in the xy-plot of pressure, where the local
pressure is less than the vapor pressure. At v = 30m/s & p = 4bar, In this case body being at
grater depth 30m, causing increase in pressure. Volume faction of water vapors is reduced
than at depth 10m. But still there are regions of low pressure causing cavitation. The size of
the cavity is reduced shown in fig 7 & 8, this is because of the fact that as the pressure rises at
greater depth and region where the pressure goes below the vapor pressure also reduces.
Although the pressure reduces near the nose and tail regions but for the pressure to go below
the vapor pressure from the high pressure is realatively less.At v = 30m/s & p = 5bar, same
phenomenon happens. Size of the cavity is further reduced at same locations, this is because
of the fact that pressure reduces at these locations but this reduction in pressure from such a
high pressure is relatively less, sown in fig 9 & fig10.
In the second part of study, Pressure is kept constant and analysis is performed at constant
depth of 10m and for three different velocity conditions, i.e. v = 15 m/s, 30 m/s, 45 m/s. At P
= 2bar, v = 15m/s, t=10 s, in these conditions although the velocity is not that high but still
the velocity at nose and tail regions is high enough. Since water being incompressible, the
pressure at these regions is low enough so that it goes below the vapor pressure. Therefore
volume fraction of water vapors at these region are observed forming cavities. Although the
size of cavities formed is not so large. This fact is shown in fig11 & fig 12.
At P = 2 bar, v = 30m/s and depth in water = 10m, analysis show that this velocity is high
enough to cause very high velocities at nose and tail regions, hence resulting in very low
pressure. Pressure here is again low enough to be lower than vapor pressure. In this case, low
pressure region is large causing bigger size cavity shown in fig 13. The location of cavity is
well demonstrated in the static pressure graph fig14. At P = 2bar, v = 45m/s, this velocity is
high enough to cause very high velocity at sharp edges. Water being incompressible, causing
large low pressure regions at these locations. Therefore in this case region where cavity
formed is much larger.
In the analysis it was also observed that cavity size formed is time dependent up to time it is
growing but when once it is grown, then it becomes time independent.
Hence while designing the underwater moving vehicle; it is very important to design such a
shape that incorporates minimum sharp changes in geometry, the depth of the submerged
body and hence the low pressure regions are avoided. Cavitation analysis should be
performed at every depth in water to avoid cavitation. Validation of results was done
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indirectly. Coefficient of pressure was calculated for Hull model [4] using fluent and was
compared with experimental results and results available in literature. It was observed clearly
that since our results agree well with experimental results, therefore our CFD analysis is
validated for pressure distribution over the Hull body. Now by comparing the pressure
distribution over the Hull body for different working conditions, demonstrates that the
cavities at the particular location of the low pressure regions are formed and the size of
cavity.depends upon the size of low pressure region.

Fig 3 A typical bubble cavity formed on Nose of Hull model at

30m depth in water and P = 4 bar, V= 30m/s, t = 20s
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Fig 4 A typical bubble cavity formed on Tail of Hull model at 30m

depth in water and P = 4 bar, V= 30m/s, t = 20s

7. CONCLUSION
1.It is obvious from the analysis that cavitation takes place at the locations where flow
encounters the sharp changes in geometry. At these locations local pressure drops below the
vapor pressure, creating cavities there.
2. It is also observed in the analysis that size of the cavity grows with the time until flow gets
fully developed. When flow gets fully developed, region of low pressure is specified and
cavities are formed at these specified regions forming specified size of the cavity. Outside
this region pressure is not lower than vapor pressure, no cavity is observed.
3. Analysis also shows that cavity formed remains intact with the wall at these conditions.
For higher velocity and lower pressure i.e. less depth in water, it may detach from the body.
When depth in water increases the pressure on the body increases which results in decrease in
cavitation provided the velocity is not very high. Therefore cavitation analysis should be done
at every depth in order to avoid cavitation.
4. While designing, to rule out cavitation optimization should be done by analyzing the
geometry at every condition to know limits of the designer.
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REFERENCES

[1] Reboud. J. L., Delannoy, Y. (1994) “Two –Phase Flow Modeling of Unsteady Cavitation,”Proceedings of
2nd International Symposium on Cavitation, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 39-44..,

[2] Saurel, R., Cocchi, J.P., Butler, P.B. (1999)”Numerical Study of Cavitation in the wake of a Hypervelocity
Underwater Projectile,”AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power, Vol. 15,No. 4.

[3] Reichardt, H. (1946) “The laws of Cavitation Bubbles at Axially Symmetrical Bodies in a flow, “Ministry
of Aircraft Production Volkenrode ,MAP-VG, Reports and Translations 766, Office of Naval Research.

[4] Cindy C Whitfield, Dr Eric Johnson, Dr. Fredrick Lutze “Steady and Unsteady Force and moments Data on
a DARPA2 Submarine”, PhD Thesis Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia.

[5] Lindau, J.W., Kunz, R.F., Gilbeling, H.J. (2000)”Validation of High Reynolds Number, Unsteady
Multiphase CFD Modeling for Naval Applications,” presented at the 23rd Symposium on Naval
Hydrodynamics, Val de Reuil ,France
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Fig 5 Volume fraction of water vapors using Fig 6 XY-plot of pressure distribution Over the Hull
Mixture model at P = 3 bar, V= 30m/s, wall at P = 3 bar, V= 30m/s, t = 20s,depth in
t = 20s and 20 m depth in water water=20m.

Fig 7 Volume fraction of water vapors using Fig 8 XY-plot of pressure distribution Over the Hull
Mixture model at P = 4 bar, V= 30m/s, wall at P = 4 bar, V= 30m/s, t = 20s,depth in water =
t = 20s,and depth in water = 30m 30m

Fig 9 Volume fraction of water vapors using Fig 10 XY-plot of pressure distribution Over the Hull
Mixture model at P = 5 bar, V= 30m/s, t = 20s wall at P = 5 bar, V= 30m/s, t = 20s and depth in
and depth in water = 40m water = 40m
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Fig 11 Volume fraction of water vapors using Fig 12 Velocity contours of water vapors using Mixture
Mixture model at P = 2 bar,V= 15m/s, t = 10s model at P = 2 bar, V= 15m/s, t = 10s, depth = 10m
at depth in water = 10m

Fig 13 Volume fraction of water vapors using Mixture Fig 14 Velocity contours over the Hull wall using Mixture
model at P = 2 bar, V= 30m/s, t = 20s, depth = 10m model at P = 2 bar, V= 30m/s,t = 20s ,depth = 10m
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